Lorrie Moore - The Collected Stories of Lorrie Moore

Behind me there is a barebacked man in denim fumbling with my jacket pocket three rocks away.

I run behind a bush.

Now he is clambering up the slope thinking I haven't seen him. I can bring myself to say nothing and he gradually disappears into the trees. I turn away, listen again to the water. I am now getting cold. I go back to my rock and lie down, the earth moving, chafing beneath the blue membrane of the sky like a slow ball-bearing.

I rub my shins and get dressed.

luckily I still have my keys. On the way back to pick up Jeffrey and Tom from the movie, the radio plays Barbra Streisand movie soundtracks. I take my time. In college there were three books I liked: Walden, Agamemnon , and Waiting for Godot . These were operations I understood. I hum to the radio. A Smokey the Bear commercial booms on and says that only I can prevent forest fires, I sweat with responsibility, and then the slick, mentholated DJ returns, announcing that now we return to The Way We Were. I drive slow, like an old man after a war.

sorry i'm late, I yell out the window, parking lot gravel crunching beneath the tires. They are the only two people left at the cinema, and they are standing there like two lone cornstalks by the highway marquee, big and little in navy blue windbreakers. I reach over to unlock the door and they both climb in the front seat, Jeffrey in the middle. Tom slams the door shut.

Sorry I'm late, I say again, and Jeffrey puts one cold hand on my face to try to make me jump and Tom rubs his palms together beneath the glove compartment, saying don't you have the heater on?

I am too warm already, but I flick it to high. It responds with a roar and we are off down the road, a Maytag dryer on wheels. How was the movie?

Radishes are round, quotes my son. Radishes are red. Specially when you take them and bite off their heads.

That's what Danny the Dragon said, explains my husband.

It wasn't Danny the Dragon, argues Jeffrey. It was the duck that said that.

Tom, I chide, don't you know a duck from a dragon? A light turns yellow and I speed through it.

Tom looks out the window to his right: I'm telling you, it was the dragon.

Jeffrey looks straight ahead. There's no such thing as real dragons, right Mom?

I steal a quick look over his head at Tom, whose nostrils are flaring. We have stopped for a light at Quaker Boulevard. That's right, dear. I think, uh, they were mostly killed off in wars or something.

In the Vietnam war? he asks, so sincere, so interested.

In the War of the Roses, blurts Tom, impatiently, his hands tucked under his arms. Also heavy dragon casualties in the Glorious Revolution.

You'll confuse him, I sing through my teeth, flooring the gas as the light changes.

He's already confused! Tom suddenly shouts, angrily pounding the dashboard as Jeffrey hides his face in my sleeve. I tell you it wasn't the fucking duck!

i've been so touchy, murmurs Tom in bed as we stare at the ceiling together in the dark. I turn my head to look at him. He has been crying. Sharp triangles of hair are plastered to his forehead. Help me, Riva, he gasps, and his face cracks open again, but this time waterlessly. I feel the heaving of his rib cage. He brings his arm up over his face and hides in the angle it forms. I move toward him, on my side, press myself against him, cradle his head, pry loose his arm, and say: Tom, tell me. It's Scranton again, isn't it? He starts to shake his head no but then gives up. He nods yes and somehow it helps lessen the heaving. His eyes look at me, frantic, desperate. I place my hand gently to his cheek, but I do not kiss him.

i am sure the lady at the health food store is dying. Her eyes are puffy and her lips are dried, stuck together. If she opened her mouth, it would sound like Velcro pulling apart. The door clacks and tinkles behind me.

Hi, I say cheerily. Well, you know, guess what, Scranton's back in the picture again that tenacious dame. What can you do? No water can be thicker than water, you know what I mean?

I have no idea what I'm saying. I just want to save her life.

Tom's okay, I continue. I mean, we all have our bad habits. Me, for instance, I eat graham crackers like crazy.

Her mouth lets in air, a grinning fish. Sorry to hear that, she says.

But I don't know whether she means Scranton or the graham crackers, and so I just say yeah, well, I'm sure I need some sort of vitamin, and look woefully toward the shelf.

amahara, can you come here please and take care of Mrs. Baker's account?

That old bag?

I grimace. Mrs. Baker is standing not six feet away. What I mean, Amahara recovers impressively, picking up a marked-down patent leather purse and smiling at Mrs. Baker, is that you really do need a new bag.

perhaps i should do something else. Teach or something, I am saying to my mother who has relapsed into senility again but who is demanding that I confide professional and domestic secrets. She will insist she doesn't remember a thing, that I should tell her my troubles again. She already has forgotten her announced intention to leave St. Veronica's.

Has this Tom got a new mistress? she asks sternly, as if that would explain my discontent with Leigenbaum's.

No, no. That's not it, I say quickly and turn the subject to the gum she is chewing, which smells like suntan lotion.

Honey-coconut, she says. No problem with my dentures either. There is a long silence. I look at my hands.

Good stuff, reiterates my mother. Honey-coconut. Made by Beech-Nut.

Why do you haunt me? You, like a tattoo on my tongue, like the bay leaf at the bottom of every pan. You who sprawled out beside me and sang my horoscope to a Schubert symphony, something about travel and money again, and we lay there, both of our breaths bad, both of our underwear dangling elastic, and then you turned toward me with a gaze like two matches, putting the horoscope aside, you traced my buried ribs with an index finger, lingered at my collarbone, admiring it as one might a flying buttress, murmuring: Nice clavicle. And me, too new at it and scared, not knowing what to say, whispering: You should see my ten-speed.

Jeffrey get in here, I yell out the back door. It's getting dark and dinner's ready. He is playing Murder the Leaf in the backyard with his friend Angela Dillersham. They carry large sticks.

Jeffrey do you hear me?

Yeah, he says and mumbles see ya to Angela, then shambles toward the back porch. Fuck it, damn it all, I hear him say, dragging himself up the stairs and I slap him as he comes in the door and send him crying to his room without his spaghetti or his fruit cocktail or his stick.

where's Jeffrey? asks Tom.

He's being punished, I say, twirling spaghetti into a spoon.

But you sent him to bed without dinner two nights ago, says Tom, petulantly poking a wrinkled grape. Fuck it, damn it all, Riva, he's going to starve if you keep this up.

Go to your room, Tom, I say.

But he doesn't. He stays. He looks at me, blinking and amazed.

we are in Tom's room. My curtains and my clothes are here, but more and more it has taken on a disgruntled greenishness that is Tom's, a foggy haze like a fish tank that needs to be cleaned. We have to talk about this, he says.

What is this' ? I ask.

Scranton. Julia. You know. It's at the root of it all.

It all? I ask, a tyrant for precision.

Yes, well, this giant ravine between us, he explains.

Ah yes. Ravine. I think of my stolen wallet. There were pictures. And an eye donor's card. And then I think of the sun, the son.

I'm sure it's hard for you to believe, he continues. After all I said and promised last year and now all this… again…

All this ? I ask, getting good at it.

Julia.

Oh, right. Scranton. I have always hated her name.